United Says It Grabs Six More Gates at O’Hare, But It’s Not Entirely Clear

It’s been well-documented how American has shrunk in Chicago since the pandemic, but how many of you know how that impacts O’Hare’s Airline Use and Lease Agreement (AULA) signed in 2018? Yeah, me neither… until now. And things are about to get interesting as United says it is going to get six more gates later this year thanks to those lease terms. The thing this, this gate allocation process is a complete mess, and it sets things up to ping pong around in a disruptive way for years to come.

Back in 2018, the long-term signatory airlines at the airport agreed that every year, O’Hare would re-balance its gates if one of two things happened by February 1 of each year. This process was delayed during the pandemic, but it’s happening now. These are the two things that can trigger a change:

• if O’Hare needs more common use gates (those which it can control and give space to airlines as needed)
• if a long-term signatory airline requests more preferential use gate space (those the airline controls)

As outlined in an internal email from United’s VP-ORD Omar Idris which I reviewed, the airline has requested more preferential use gates, and now the re-balancing process begins. To start, O’Hare will look at all 2024 departures operated using each airline’s preferential-use gates and calculate the departure market share. Common-use gates and the airlines using them are excluded from this process.

The first question is, who is a long-term signatory with preferential-use gates? A spokesperson from the Chicago Department of Aviation gave me a list of 19 long-term signatory airlines, but that includes long-dead Interjet and Swiss Air (which I assume means SWISS?), so who knows what to make of that. But of those airlines, only seven have preferential-use gates. The Significant Seven are:

• Air Canada – 2 preferential gates in Terminal 2 (E2 and E3)
• Alaska – 2 preferential gates in Terminal 2 (E15 and E17)
• American – around 60 to 70 preferential gates in Terminal 3
• Delta – 10 preferential gates in Terminal 5 (M2 through M11)
• JetBlue – 1 preferential gate in Terminal 3 (G2)
• Spirit – 4 preferential gates in Terminal 3 (L2C, L5, L7, and L10C)
• United – 88 preferential gates (all 51 in Terminal 1 and 37 in Terminal 2)

American’s gate count isn’t entirely clear to me, but it’s in that range. Also, my guess on Delta’s gate count is just that, a guess, based on usage since Delta never responded to my inquiry. For those who prefer visuals, here’s what it looks like as best I can tell.

Do keep in mind that this is definitely not perfectly right. When there is construction going on, gates move around. The gates on the north side of the L “stinger” at the north end of Terminal 3 are common-use, but American has preferential use of them while it has other gates down for construction. But listen… this is close enough.

Using the Significant Seven’s gates, I calculated departure share for 2024. Then, I have to multiply that by the “linear frontage” of the gate space to figure out how much needs to be allocated.

What the hell is “linear frontage”? Well, widebodies need more space than narrowbodies so a gate count itself isn’t entirely fair. Instead, the airport takes 100 feet out from the terminals and measures how much linear frontage each airline has in feet.

Here’s a map from the AULA from 2018 of what they thought it was going to look like once the new Delta gates opened in Terminal 5. It’s not right, but you can get a sense of what gets measured.

^{via ORD AULA}

Is your head spinning? Mine too. But once they have this number, then they can start to divvy things up. United says that because it is flying about 52 percent of scheduled departures from 48 percent of gate frontage, it deserves six more gates. I built a model, and it shows the same thing, so I must be on the right track. My model shows where the gap lies.

Difference Between Departure Share and Linear Frontage Share 2024 (Est)

If we translate this into actual gate numbers, it shows that United should get six, and Spirit should get one. It also says American and Delta should each lose three while Alaska should lose one. This assumes that every preferential-use gateholder gets to keep at least one gate, otherwise Alaska and JetBlue would get nothing which seems unlikely.

BUT WAIT, even this may not be real because it’s entirely possible that the airport decides it needs to change its common-use gate needs. If it does, that would change the pool available for preferential-use when they re-balance.

I asked the Chicago Department of Aviation and they said nothing of note, just regurgitated the process. What we do know is that by April 1, the airport has to do the re-balancing and tell airlines what’s changing. Then the gates change hands on October 1.

But let’s pretend that common-use gates aren’t changing. If that’s true, then it seems obvious to me that United would take Alaska’s two gates in Terminal 2, finally taking all of Terminal 1 and 2 to itself (except for the two gates that are joint venture partner Air Canada’s). Then, United will have to spill over into Concourse G in Terminal 3 for the rest. It could take JetBlue’s gate G2 and then three more from American.

Since my calculation shows Alaska losing a gate, it could then move with JetBlue over to the L concourse. Those gates plus the new gate Spirit would gain can then all come from American’s current set of gates. American could then swap those three for the three currently common-use gates in the L stinger. Those three common-use gates could move over to Terminal 5 where Delta will lose three gates, completing the circle.

Here’s how that would look:

There’s also always the possibility that Air Canada moves to the G gates and United instead takes two more in Terminal 2, but that doesn’t really matter. You get the idea.

What DOES matter is that this is all a silly shell game anyway. Remember, the gates don’t change over until October 1, so United will only get to use those six gates for the last three months of the year. But when the process starts all over again next February? It looks at departure share for all of the previous year. That means United will not have the benefit of those six gates for the first nine months of data which skews things greatly. That means it could very well lose again next year even if it is ramping up. And the cycle will continue since the data will never include more than a quarter of a year with the most recent gate allocation.

So for now, it is a little premature for United to talk about this since we don’t know what the airport’s needs will be for common-use. That being said, it seems clear United will get something. Of course, in the end, it may be all for naught if it loses them based on 2025 usage numbers when the next round of re-balancing happens in 2026.

Everybody clear? Great. I’m gonna go get a drink now.